Ex-yippie Hoffman Urges Youths To Fight For Peace

Abbie Hoffman, a leading anti-war activist of the 1960s, drew cheers Friday night at Rollins College when he urged youths to fight for ''peace and justice.''

''We have made breakthroughs but we haven't written the final chapter,'' said Hoffman, speaking before a crowd in the college's Enyart Field House.

''We need young people to fight for peace and justice. They have the new and creative ideas,'' he told his audience, many of whom were too young to remember Hoffman's radical protests of about 20 years ago.

Hoffman's appearance was organized by the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, which represents 25 groups in Florida working for causes such as disarmament.

''The worst nightmare they young people have is that they cannot control their own destinies. People can make a difference and I urge you to make the world better today than we tried to make it yesterday.''

Hoffman was a member of the Chicago Seven, a group of radicals charged with masterminding violent demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Chicago Seven were convicted, but the convictions were later overturned by an appeals court.

The former yippie told the crowd of his visits to Nicaragua, where a war is being fought between the leftist Sandinista government and the U.S-backed rebels. ''U.S. history in Central America is not a very pretty picture,'' he said.

''Every time I go there Nicaragua what impresses me is not how little civil liberties they have but how many they have. They strive to maintain their freedom in the face of the terrorism from the largest country in the world and the pressure from the Contras,'' he said, attacking U.S. aid to the rebels.

Hoffman also said he was harassed by government agencies during the height of his activism.

He accused the FBI of committing 155 illegal wiretaps, bribing

neighbors to spy on him, illegally opening his mail, and hiring someone to psychoanalyze him.

In the early 1980s, Hoffman spent time in prison on a sentence for selling cocaine.